University students mark Black July Remembrance in Jaffna, Vavuniyaa and Batticaloa

[TamilNet, Thursday, 23 July 2020, 22:46 GMT]
Tamil university students in Jaffna, Vavuniyaa and Batticaloa staged remembrance events within their university premises. Jaffna University Student Union leaders, who gathered at their office lighting candles for the victims of the 1983 SL State-sponsored pogrom against Tamils in the island said Black July remembrance must be integral to the process of international justice on Tamil genocide. Remembrance events were also observed at Vavuniyaa campus and the Eastern University. In the meantime, Tamil political parties that usually organise Black July Remembrance events, were too busy this time with their election campaign.

However, all actors, including the political parties, engaged in social-media postings, marking Black July Remembrance.



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The late Gandhiyam David, interviewed in 2012 by TamilNet, gave an eyewitness account on how he faced the SL State-sponsored pogrom against Eezham Tamils inside the Welikade prison on 25 July 1983:



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International Commission of Jurists in 1984: ‘Sri Lanka: A Mounting Tragedy of Errors’

The late Paul Sieghart, a renowned human rights campion who was the chairman of the executive of the Council of Justice, the British section of the International Commission of Jurists, in a report titled ‘Sri Lanka: A Mounting Tragedy of Errors’ issued in March 1984 noted that the Sri Lankan Minister for Industries and Scientific Affairs, Cyril Matthew, who was also the leader of the principal UNP trade union, was behind the pamphlet titled "Sinhala People - Awake, Arise, and Safeguard Buddhism".



Chronology: